Words as selfie, photobomb and unfriended are very common nowadays. Yet, these words didn’t exist a couple of years ago. Social media is changing our language. We even create new verbs like Googling and tweeting for example. We created new ways of communicating, by using emoticons and acronyms such as LOL, BRB, OMG and so on.
Another phenomenon we see nowadays is the re appropriation of existing words. Like the word friended or unfriended. Thanks to Facebook these words have an entirely different meaning than they had before.
You could say that language changes over time, and that this change is similar to the changes back in the days.
I’m wondering whether this change in language is similar to the changes before, or that this change in language will have a major influence on the way people see the world, and even make the world dumber.
To illustrate this, I’ve found the following meme that describes my concern:
This is a meme created by a parent. Her son saw a bird outside, and instead of saying ‘oh look it’s a bird’, he said ‘oh look it’s a Twitter’. This example illustrates the problem we might be facing with social media. On the other hand, you could call this a funny mistake.
So my question to you is; in what terms has social media changed language, and could this be a (future) problem for the way we speak to each other.
Engaging Customers and Prosumers – Homework Assignment
24
September
2015
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In ‘is your social media strategy successful’, researchers looked at how companies can improve their social media success. The researchers analyzed multiple Facebook campaigns and measured the amount of unique people it reached. Their main findings were that the most successful campaigns :
Include a contest, request, ask questions or thank you note
Require co creation
Are posted on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday around 11.00, 15.00 and 20.00
Are creative
In ‘tweet me, friend me, make me buy’, the authors state that companies should use social network to sell their products. Not only that, companies should start actively seeking potential customers via social media. If you read a tweet, for example, that complains about the lack of functions on a certain product, you can respond and say that the product you sell, does have more functions. What I really like about this article is the way the roles are turned. Usually a customer searches for a company to purchase a product, now companies actively search for customers. The authors suggest that companies have to look at four factors in a potential customer. A customer needs a budget, authority to purchase, need the product and that a company’ timeline for delivery evens up with the customers expectations.
The ‘corporate twitter channel’ article analyzed whether user engagement and informedness in a corporate twitter channel influence the firms’ reputation. The results showed that user engagement and informedness in a corporate twitter channel have a positive relationship with corporate reputation.
I have looked into co-creation (introduced by Li and Soonius 2012), and found two very interesting articles. One article emphasized the importance of co-creation. With co-creation, a company can distinguish themselves from competitors. Besides that, the articled stated that with co-creation, a win-win situation arises. A company wins because they innovate in a time and cost saving manner. Prosumers/consumers win because they contribute to something and are being listened to (Izvercian et al. 2013).
The negative sides of co creation is described in an article by Verhoef et al. 2013. They state that strong brands (i.e. Puma, Apple, Burger King etc.) have a lot to lose, and co-creation gives people a chance to insult the brand. This is what happened with a campaign by McDonalds. McDonalds wanted to promote positive word of mouth, so they introduced #McDstories. This recoiled as it became a stage for negativity. Someone tweeted ‘#McDStories Hospitalized for food poising after eating McDonald’s in 1989. Never ate there again and became a Vegetarian. Should have sued.’ Another negative effect is that there are too many initiatives. The quantity and quality of the ideas decrease as the frequency of co-creation campaigns increases.
Izvercian, M., Şeran, S. and Buciuman, C. (2013). Transforming Usual Consumers into Prosumers with the Help of Intellectual Capital Collaboration for Innovation.IJIET,
Li, T. and Soonius, G. 2012. Is your social media strategy effective? An empirical study of the factors influencing the success of Facebook campaigns. Proceedings of the Workshop on Electronic Business, Orlando, FL, December.PDF
Verhoef, P. C., Beckers, S. F., & van Doorn, J. 2013. Understand the perils of co-creation.Harvard Business Review, 91(9).
Dislike Button – Facebook Finally Caved!
17
September
2015
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For years on now Facebook users have been asking for a ‘dislike button’. Facebook never gave in to the request of their users, up until now. On September 15th 2015 Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Facebook) announced that Facebook is working on a ‘dislike button’.
Picture 1 – Dislike Button
The reason why Facebook never implanted a dislike button before is because they were concerned how people would use it. Facebook wants to make sure that the button won’t be about encouraging negativity the way other sites such as YouTube and Reddit do. Mark Zuckerberg said: ‘we didn’t want to just build a dislike button because we don’t want to turn Facebook into a forum where people are voting up or down on people’s posts.
Zuckerberg explained however that in some scenarios, when, for example, a friend of yours shares something that is sad, whether it is a relative passing a way, a crisis or a relationship that ended, it may not be appropriate to press that ‘like’ button. In those cases, one might want to express empathy towards the situation. Nowadays this is not possible on Facebook, or at least not in the same simple way as liking a post. By creating an option to ‘dislike’ a status or a photo people can show their compassion.
Picture 2 – Example where one could express empathy with a dislike.
We don’t know what the dislike button will look like yet, but there is a chance that the dislike button has a negative effect on ‘regular’ Facebook users. Although Facebook promised that the button will not be just so you can express your resentment on pictures of your friends’ baby.
However, companies, brands and retailers could definitely be affected by the dislike button. Vice president of Forrester research Inc. Sucharita Mulpuru says that the dislike button will be the perfect way to vent about a brand. I have to agree with Mulpuru.
Besides the venting, the negativity expressed towards companies, brands and retailers could have an enormous effect on Facebook-based advertisements. Companies pay Facebook for advertisements, but they don’t want to pay for an advertisement when this will cause a tidal wave of dislikes. So if this will be possible when the dislike button is rolled out, companies might start to avoid Facebook when it comes to advertisements. If this is the case, Facebook could lose a lot of money that they used to generate from advertisements.
However, one could look at it in a different way. Companies could use the like button vs the dislike button as an informal poll. This could give retailers a better sense of what customers like and dislike. This way they use the dislike button in their advantage.
I was wondering what you think!? Is Facebook taking a risk with the implementation of the dislike button? Will companies still use Facebook as an advertisement platform? And lastly, would you be interested in a dislike button, or will this only generate negativity?
Every year from September until December cookie companies produce a special festive type of biscuit called ‘pepernoten’. This is because of a Dutch holiday called Sinterklaas (ST. Nicholas). Pepernoten doesn’t really have an international term, the term that comes closest is ‘gingerbread cookies’. Pepernoten come in all kind of flavours, from plain pepernoten to a wide range of chocolate covered pepernoten (i.e. dark chocolate, milk chocolate & white chocolate covered pepernoten) and there are even more flavours.
You might start to wonder where I’m going with this, and what this has to do with Social Media, well, you’re going to find out.
A Dutch company called ‘Bolletje’ is a well-known cookie factory that also bakes pepernoten. At Bolletje one can buy a bag of just plain pepernoten, or a bag of a mix of the chocolate ones (i.e. dark, milk & white chocolate pepernoten combined) or even bags with truffle flavoured pepernoten. In my family, everyone prefers the white chocolate covered pepernoten over all the other flavours. Too bad for us, because it is not possible to ‘just’ buy a bag of white chocolate covered pepernoten, they’re always mixed together with the milk and dark chocolate ones.
Picture 1 – White chocolate covered pepernoten by Bolletje
Well, maybe the wait is finally over because last week, two Dutch Bolletje ‘fans’ asked Bolletje, via Facebook, if they could start producing bags of only white chocolate covered pepernoten. Bolletje replied saying that they could start producing bags of only white chocolate covered pepernoten, but they’d only do it if there’d be sufficient support, say something like 200.000 likes.
Just like the ‘fly2Miami’ action, the ‘bags of white chocolate covered pepernoten’ campaign started. The two fans are trying to get the total amount of likes on the Facebook post in picture 2 up to 200.000. If they get there, Bolletje promised to produce the bags.
Picture 2 – The Facebook post of one of the fans
I understand that Bolletje has to have sufficient consumers willing to buy the bags of only white chocolate covered pepernoten to make it profitable, but is liking a Facebook post the same as saying that one will buy the white chocolate only bags? Is Bolletje taking a risk producing the bags (if the post gets enough likes), or will this implantation create a massive profit increase? Do you think that this strategy would be as effective on other social media platforms such as Twitter or Instagram?
If you ask me, I think this campaign will be beneficial for Bolletje. If one looks, for example, at other posts on Facebook by Bolletje, they usually get a few hundred likes, but this post has already gotten over 135.000 likes. So by this campaign, Bolletje got as wider audience-range, and we might finally get bags of white chocolate covered pepernoten by Bolletje!! Every like gets the fans closer to the bags of white chocolate covered pepernoten, everyone can make a difference so click here and raise the amount of likes ;)!
